Saturday’s long run was the last long run before the Marathon. The day started out beautiful and we had a great first 10 miles, but then the sun, heat, and humidity reared it’s ugly head. By mile 15, we were hating it. We were in Timonium which means hill after hill after hill and twenty miles of hills suck. And they suck worse in 87 degree weather.

We would pass folks on the street and they would say to us, “beautiful day for a run!” Ummmm….No, it wasn’t a beautiful day to run. It was a beautiful day to have a picnic with the family, it was a beautiful day to sit by the pool with a good book, but it was not a beautiful day to run. What non-runners fail to understand is when we run, for us it feels 10 – 20 degrees warmer depending on the humidity. So, when it’s 87 and humid, it feels like 97+ degrees to us. Then you add the sun. No, it was not a beautiful day for a run. It sucked cheese balls.

It takes 10 days to two weeks for the body to acclimate to keeping cool at higher temperatures. (http://www.baa.org/races/10k/participant-information/running-in-hot-weather.aspx). We pretty much went from running in the low-60’s to upper-80’s overnight. No acclimation here.

By mile 18.5, we were done. We decided to call it a day and walk the last half mile back to Charm City Run. We figured with the hills and the heat, missing the last mile was perfectly fine. And yes, we counted that last half mile in our distance…after all it was an up hill walk and dammit, it counted! I know that we all felt that sense of disappointment of not reaching our goal for a brief moment, but trust me…that moment was quick. When we talked to Coach Marie, she said that stopping was the right thing to do and that someone actually ended up at urgent care because of dehydration.

I know that the mind is supposed to will the body to go on, but sometimes, you really do have to listen to your body. When it’s done, it’s done. When you push your body for 3 miles past the point when you start feeling like crap and you don’t  break through the “I feel like crap” feeling, then you need to just call it a day. After all, it’s not the big race and you need to train smart.

Deep down I’ll have to admit that only getting to 19 sucks just a little. But, I have to be fine with what we did. It’s not quite 20 miles, but I’m good with that. I have to be otherwise, I’ll end up with that mental monster on race day and we can’t have that.